Death Message [Paperback]

Although I believe that British chick lits (can you say Bridget Jones?) are always at the top of their game, I run hot and cold on British thrillers - with the exception of Mark Billingham - I like all of his books as he does not hesitate to write very dark, creepy and scary books.

Death Message rates somewhere in the between a 3 and 4 star review. One of the things I like about Billingham is that he never runs away from writing some somewhat gross and gruesome scenes - and he manages to do this without it being gratuitous somehow. Death Message does not really deliver this as much as in the previous books.

I like the basic premise - our returning character Detective Thom Thorne is back and he is getting "death messages" through his cell phone - with the killer sending him, at first, pictures of dead victims and progresses to sending him pictures of future victims.

This, of course, triggers a massive manhunt for the killer - who we discover the identify of about 1/3 into the storyline.

Maybe this is why the book was not quite as suspensful for me? not sure.

However, this book was still a good read and kept me entertained enough to stick it through.

Okay, okay, admittedly I'm a pushover for British crime novels, but most will be, too, after reading any of Mark Billingham's seven Tom Thorne thrillers. Thorne is a Detective Investigator with savvy and a heart, very human, so we relate to him easily, sprout goose bumps when he's in deep trouble, and once we begin a Thorne title cannot put it down until the end. By now he seems like an old friend, one we know well but still cannot predict what he will say or do next.

Billingham brings his latest thriller very much to the present by the important use of a cellphone. Just as Thorne walks into his kitchen to tell Elvis he's sorry for forgetting to feed her and to make some tea his cellphone rings. He knew who it would be from - Louise, which made him smile. But then the phone rang again and this message was as far from Louise as possible. "It was a multimedia message, with a photograph attached.....and Tom Thorne knew a dead man when he saw one."

As techies scramble to trace the sender another photo arrives, and before long Thorne finds himself faced with an enemy capable of manipulating others into doing his dastardly deeds for him, and it starts to hit Thorne very close to home.

In police lingo the phrase "death message" refers to telling someone that they have just lost a loved one. But, in this case, those messages are directed toward Thorne but why and by whom?

- Gail Cooke

According to Billingham, a "death message" is the news the cops deliver to the family when one of their number has died suddenly and (usually) violently. In the case of Marcus Brooks, who is only a couple of weeks from being released after six years in prison, the message is to inform him of the deaths of his girlfriend and young son at the hands of a hit-and-run driver. And it was no accident. Looking forward to seeing his loved ones again was pretty much the only thing that was keeping Marcus sane, and now that he has no life to look forward to, the obvious alternative is revenge. All this is unusual in this author's series of very good novels about the irascible DI Tom Thorne, homicide specialist in the Metropolitan Police. He often lets the reader peer over the killer's shoulder, get into his mind, work out what motivates him -- but never before has he given away the killer's identity. But it works because Marcus -- who certainly is the murderer -- isn't really the Bad Guy. That role belongs possibly to a couple of bent cops whom Thorne would very much like to identify and bring in. Or maybe there are even further layers. And much of the story is concerned not with the murders so much as with the way Thorne handles them, because even though he often bends the rules and ignores procedures in order to solve a case, he goes far beyond that this time. Because he has his own father's death to avenge. And, while he's about it, there's a new woman in his life, too -- a kidnap specialist from another unit of the Met. Will this relationship be any more successful than the previous ones he's edged into? (Stay tuned.) I wasn't sure this one was going to work, what with the author giving away so much so early in the story, but it all comes together pretty well. The only questionable narrative strategy is bringing in events and characters from _The Burning Girl,_ four novels ago, so you really want to be sure you've read that book first. Otherwise, you're apt to feel a bit sandbagged.